Changing Culture

You can jam the culture, you can conform to the culture, and you can attack the culture but you won't succeed. What we must do is LEAD the culture.

It it incumbent upon each of us to redirect our course to a path of peace, harmony, and long-term sustainability. I believe the evolutionary tools are already built into us. For instance, if every woman in the world were given 100% equal rights, empowerment, and education, I firmly believe that world population would stabilize. To achieve this goal, we must challenge the isms, memes, delusions, fairy tails, lies, and myths that are preprogrammed into our culture to achieve short-term, self-serving objectives.

Each of us, must lead in the way we are called to lead -- authors, poets, movie producers, politicians, educators, tree-huggers, company presidents, etc... We must acknowledge that what we know in our hearts is our destiny -- we must listen to our DNA and do what we are genetically programmed to do -- to be alphas and LEAD the human packs.

If we have children, nieces, or nephews, etc... we must educate, empower, and inspire our young people to be leaders. We must equip them with the education, experiences, exposure, and perspective they need to make wise decisions.

We must also battle the demons inside us -- cynicism, depression, and the feeling of hopelessness. We carry on even in the face of long odds.

We must also inspire, encourage, and be bold. Look at the example of Interface Corp. -- someone turned founder Ray Anderson onto Daniel Quinn and Paul Hawken, and now this is a super-green company that is setting an example for ALL COMPANIES around the world.

Or think of the great work that Southface is going! They are providing a future road map for zero footprint homes and businesses. Right now our country is wasting $200 billion a year on a pointless war in Iraq. Imagine if those funds were rediverted to home insulation programs or energy efficiency research, or solar panel credits.

But to get back on my bandwagon ...

Everything we do or say in life may positively influence someone else in a totally unexpected but wonderful way. Thus, we must follow what Ishmael taught us, and we must teach others with gentleness, patience, and without judging.

Believe me, I would rather not lead -- I would rather hide under my desk in my fetal position. But to do nothing is the easy way out. To declare hopelessness is too convenient. To fight for our planet's honor and dignity is hard -- perhaps the hardest thing we will ever do. But in the end we will have peace knowing that we tried to do what we were put here on this Earth to do.

Yes, world population may grow to 10 billion (it's 6.7 billion now). And when it costs more to extract the oil than the energy the oil produces, yeah, the worldwide crash will come down big and hard. But it will be absolutely beautiful because humanity will enter a new era. Maybe a slower, quieter, more loving era where we live in little huts surrounded by nature. Maybe we will realize that technology is just another illusion that enslaves us. Maybe we can still have our laptops and hydrogen powered cars -- but there just needs to be a lot less of us and more room for nature to flourish. We just need to eat lighter and we each need to have our own solar station to produce our own hydrogen. We just need to have one or two kids tops. We need to redirect our lust for materialism and redefine what happiness is -- perhaps it is a spiritual awakening or a realization that we are happier when we are a servant to nature, rather than a master.

Sincerely,

The Goose

Carbon-based mammal born 1960 - Human number 3,020,353,734